The Case For Highlighting One Cheese On Your Next Cheese Board

Party trays like cheese and charcuterie boards have very nearly become a requirement for entertaining guests. Their resurgent popularity has been a boon for deli owners and cheesemongers, but can be a burden for the home entertainer. Buying, preparing, and arranging multiple cheeses takes time and energy. But a complex, carefully designed cheese board can look picked over in no time, with messy knives and bits of prosciutto mixed in with the now-sweating Manchego slices. It's also disappointing ending the night with a tray scattered with dried-out bits of sliced cheeses that inevitably get tossed.

Instead of impressing with a bounty of mundane cheddars and Monterey Jack, consider focusing on one type of cheese at your next party. While there's much to be said for variety and flavor balance that Ina Garten strives for when shopping at her favorite cheese shop, we don't always have the time or desire for such complexity. What's more, focusing on a single block or style of cheese actually allows for a different inventiveness: You can buy one unique cheese that costs as much as or less than several everyday options. Or theme the rest of your plate (crackers, meats, fruits) around the highlighted cheese. It's also a speedy option when whipping up plates for yourself and one other person, so you can get to the wine drinking faster!

This hack isn't simply an excuse to load a plate with processed cheese and saltine crackers. Careful selection of a single option shows intentionality. This method allows you to shop the specialty section for just the right, most interesting block of aged Parmesan, or a wonderful farmer's market sharp cheddar for the same price as a half-dozen chunks of random yellow cheese.

You can theme the plate's other components around a specific region or style, depending on the cheese. Pair a creamy Brillat-Savarin with bright Castelvetrano olives and a bready Chardonnay sparkling wine, for example. This is yet another reason to be nice to your deli counter clerks. Sometimes extra pieces and end bits of expensive cheeses (or those about to hit their sell-by date) are set aside to sell at a discount. Make friends with your clerk, and you may have access to range of "secret" options to highlight at a bargain.

There are other advantages. Offering one cheese helps avoid one of the biggest knife mistakes, where a single knife gets "contaminated" when slicing multiple cheeses. Shopping can involve advance planning, or be done on the fly an hour before guests arrive. Using a single cheese means plates can be easily refreshed, and latecomers receive fresh slices from a single center block. To add variety, instead feature a range of crackers or fruits, which tend to be less expensive and add more texture and color than multiple cheeses.